1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an audio signal encoding apparatus. This invention also relates to an optical recording medium. In addition, this invention relates to an audio signal decoding apparatus. Furthermore, this invention relates to a method of transmitting an audio signal, and a transmission medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Highly efficient encoding of an audio signal includes a step of compressing the audio signal. Highly efficient encoding techniques are classified into two types; the lossy encoding techniques and the lossless encoding techniques. Among the lossy encoding techniques, the “acoustic encoding” is well known as a technique which renders the data deterioration acoustically undetectable. On the other hand, according to the lossless encoding and decoding techniques, the recovered data are exactly the same as the original data.
In general, a sampled or uniformly quantized audio signal has significant redundancy. During the encoding of such an audio signal, the degree of the compression of the audio signal rises as redundancy is more effectively removed therefrom.